


Skin Deep

by kittydesade



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:35:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dexter's case takes a couple surprising twists, even for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amand_r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/gifts).



_Stand back. Genius at work._

"Is it possible for you to stop looking like a fucking ghoul for five seconds?"

 _Doakes doesn't appreciate my genius. He appreciates the results, so I guess that counts for something._

Bustle of activity. None of it touched him, crouched in front of the body, gloved fingertips of one hand hovering over the blood-stained floor. Skin bleached out by the light. This was his element, everything else shut out while he picked at the patterns left by someone like him.

"Who was she?"

"Prints haven't come back yet. Dressed like she might have been a club girl or a hooker, Deb doesn't recognize her from her street days."

"Hostess." Masuka, over Batista's shoulder. "The Static Lounge. I recognize the uniform shirt. Not the shorts, though."

 _And no one was surprised._ "Did you know her?"

"Nah. Only went there once. They're one of those 'upscale' kinds of places." Upscale in air quotes. Masuka didn't sound too thrilled. Probably because he preferred his cheap hookups without pretensions.

"Guess we better pay them a visit." Doakes leaned over him. He could taste the cheesesteak the man had for lunch. "Hurry it up already."

  


* * *

  


 _Clean kill. Too clean._

"You finding anything?"

Shrug. "Apart from what I gave you at the scene, you're going to have to wait for the lab work to come back, Deb. Sitting on the arm of my chair..."

She slid off. She did not look sheepish.

"... and staring at the computer isn't going to get results any faster."

"I know, but... come on. I mean, there wasn't much to go on at the scene. Wiped clean, no prints, no trace, those incisions..."

 _Yeah, about those incisions._ Deb rambled on. Polite smile, looking up at her every sixth or seventh word. She didn't say anything he hadn't thought at the time. Everything was surgical, neat. Meticulous. Someone had been careful. Someone had taken time with her, which meant...

"... either they knew her, or we've got a serial killer."

Heh. "Do you think you should sound that excited when you say that?" _Look what happened the last time._ Even he knew better than to say that out loud.

"What? Serial killers are good, we can catch the motherfuckers. They always have a method, and they always make that one little mistake." She held up her fingers a quarter inch apart, gleeful. "Crime of passion, yeah, we might suspect it's the husband or the girlfriend or whatever, but it's too sloppy, either we break it in the first forty eight or we never have enough evidence to convict. A serial killer, you can make it stick."

He shook his head, laughed. "Get out of here. Go, let me work. You might try some of that, yourself, for a change."

"Kiss my ass," she grinned at him over her shoulder on his way out.

 _She's right. And it's only a matter of time before they realize it. I have to move quickly._

  


* * *

  


It took a little while.

 _This is the first one the killer's laid out like this._ Presented for them to find. Re-dressed in more revealing clothing, still with her work blouse on but short-shorts, four inch heels. So she was still recognizable as a woman who worked in a sex-industry club, just in a different branch of it. Someone wanted to send a message, to give a different impression of her. They'd have the name in a couple of days.

 _This one must have been special. Maybe the killer knew her._

If no one thought of it, in a couple of days he decided he'd suggest they look at the club's regular patrons as well as everyone who was there the last time she worked. Give it a couple days. That would give him time to go to work.

 _Right now all they've got is a dead woman who was cut up and crippled somewhere else and then dropped here to defile her. Put her out in the open where anyone can see. It's not the boyfriend._

Doakes had left to pick up the boyfriend on the grounds that maybe he knew something or, as the man himself had so open-mindedly put it, "maybe some freaky sex game gone bad." La Guerta rolled her eyes. Deb told him off while he leaned in the doorway and smirked at his baby sister ripping the bigger man a new one for being a jackass. Doakes looked over her at him.

"Can't you control her?" Deb almost socked Doakes one for that, he could see it in her face. No one controlled Deb except Deb. Sometimes not even then.

"I don't know, man, that was kind of a dick thing to say."

 _Let them run around in circles. I'll tell Deb later, maybe she's right. She probably is. She's been around me long enough._

The search results came back. Lots of homicides with lots of mutilated corpses, most of them gang related. A couple that looked like black market surgery gone bad, hookers trying to increase their assets and dying in the process. _Wait..._ What if they weren't hookers, after all?

The mutilations were the same. Implants removed. Surgical cuts to parts of the body that had nothing to do with implants, everything to do with cutting a person up so that if they lived, they'd heal wrong, they'd be crippled. Legs not working right, limp hands. Thumbs that didn't oppose with any strength.

The killer left their faces alone. But the rest of them, that was fair game. To make them less beautiful, less graceful. _Someone they rejected? Someone who's been passed over all his life. Ignored._ That didn't fit.

He kept digging.

  


* * *

  


 _Women serial killers are pretty rare. Not as much as everyone thinks. Most of the time they get away with it. Sometimes, I get to them first. But even I don't do women often._

She's stripped, prepped. She started to wake up. It didn't take long for her to realize where she was.

"What... who are you? What is this?"

 _That's not fear in her voice. That's outrage._

She struggled, of course. Everyone did. He might be disappointed if they didn't, but she didn't get anywhere. He leaned over her and looked down, thinking. "You're a beautiful woman, you know. You could have gotten another girlfriend..."

Her eyes blazed up at him with impotent fury. "What do you think I am, some kind of lesbo? I'm _married,_ for Chrissake. To a _man._ "

"You'd kind of have to be. Gay marriage is illegal in Florida."

Not the point. "I didn't need a girlfriend, I had enough girls just from the ones my _husband_ brought home. He couldn't stand that I was smarter than him, that my career took off faster than his. He had to remind me every damn day that I wasn't good enough for him. I wasn't _beautiful_ enough for him."

He tilted his head, puzzled. "Of course you're beautiful." The scalpel hovered over her cheek. "You never touched their faces."

"The only part of me he liked was my face."

As a kindness to her, he took a drop of blood from her stomach instead. _It's all the same blood anyway._

  


* * *

  


Three days later. Doakes looked through the files. Finally. "Looks like you're right, Morgan," while Deb shifted from foot to foot and grinned proudly. "We shoved these off to Vice, figured they were black market surgeries gone wrong. We got a serial killer."

"Now all we gotta do is wait for him to make a mistake. Work the cases, see where they lead back to, maybe he made a mistake already."

 _Poor Deb. She might crack the case, but she won't catch the killer._

Dexter smiled, ducked back into his lab.


End file.
